


Breakout

by Sholio



Category: White Collar
Genre: Community: 10tropes, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, TV Tropes, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-14
Updated: 2012-03-14
Packaged: 2017-11-01 23:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/362272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For 10Tropes - "Kicking Ass in All Her Finery". Bad guys tend to underestimate Diana, especially when she's wearing a cocktail dress and high heels. That's their first (and last) mistake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakout

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: non-graphic, off-screen torture

The room was eight feet by twelve. Concrete floor. Cinderblock walls. Diana guessed that it had been a storeroom or hiding place during Prohibition. The door was the weakest link, it had to be, but even that was heavy reinforced wood, and the crack under it was just wide enough to admit her fingers. At least it let in a little light from the hallway; otherwise she was completely in the dark.

Her purse had been taken, with her phone and gun and badge and anything else that might be useful. All she had was this slinky cocktail dress -- annoyingly constricting if she had to run, but too smoothly fitted to give her anywhere to hide anything on her body. Not to mention giving her no protection at all from the dank chill that already had her shivering and fumble-fingered. But the dress also went along with four-inch spike heels. Presently she was using one of them to dig at the crumbling mortar around the lock's strike plate. She tried to be as quiet as possible, since sound seemed to carry pretty well down here -- she could hear a lot more than she wanted from down the hall, as hard as she tried to shut it out, and then nothing at all, which was worse.

But no one came for _her._ Guys like this -- big guys, mob guys -- tended to underestimate women, especially slender women in high heels and this stupid "fuck me" dress. They had to know she was a fed too -- they'd looked in her purse, after all -- but they didn't seem to consider her a threat.

 _You big tough boys just go right on thinking I'm out of the way, scared and helpless,_ Diana thought grimly, as mortar and ancient cinderblock crumbled and sifted down around her aching fingers. The heel of her shoe gave way first, snapping off when she tried to use it as a crowbar to pop the strike plate free. She switched to the other shoe, and, with a few more minutes' patient effort, working by feel in the dark, managed to get the strike plate loose enough that she could slide the tip of her heel into the crack and push back the latch.

She waited for a moment with her ear pressed to the door, and when she heard nothing but silence, very gently pushed it open a crack and peeked out.

The corridor was just as she'd seen it when they were hustled downstairs an hour or so earlier: narrow and lit with a couple of naked light bulbs, laced with dusty cobwebs. After the darkness of her cell, though, it seemed bright. Nothing moved. No sign of the bad guys.

And, equally, no sign of the cavalry. She trusted Jones to do all that he could to get help to them, but they'd lost touch with their backup before they could send a distress signal. Right now, no one on the outside knew what was going on inside the mansion. She didn't blame the FBI for playing it safe and not blowing their cover by charging in with guns and a SWAT team -- having no way to know that their cover was already well and truly blown.

Which meant, for the moment, it was up to them. To her.

She shifted her grip on her single remaining spike-heeled shoe, holding it low to her side with the heel pointed out. She'd never _tried_ to stab someone with a shoe, but it stood to reason that it could be used that way, especially with the full force of a pissed-off FBI agent behind it. And she was pretty pissed off right now.

There were two other doors along the corridor. One stood open and led to the stairwell that they'd been brought down. Diana crept in her stocking feet to the bottom of the stairs and looked up. The door at the top was solidly closed. Probably locked. Besides, she wasn't leaving without having at least a cursory look around for Peter and Neal.

The other door was a newer-looking metal door with a very large, heavy deadbolt. Given that she'd been able to hear the interrogation earlier, it _had_ to have been here; the basement wasn't large and there were no other options she could see. Diana listened at the door. No sound from inside; then a furtive rustle, and a voice, very soft, pitched for the ears of someone inside the room and not for anyone listening outside the door. She couldn't make out the words, but she recognized the cadence of Peter's voice.

"Boss?" she called softly. "Boss? Caffrey?"

More quick rustling; a clinking sound. "Diana?" 

She was already throwing the deadbolt and cracking the door open. Pitch darkness confronted her, and she slipped inside, feeling her way with her stocking feet and letting the door fall quietly shut.

"Light switch to your left," Peter said. His voice was rough, and he coughed at the end. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," she said, feeling her way to the switch. The sight that met her eyes when light flooded the room wasn't quite as bad as she'd feared, but she could still feel anger rising in her throat, hot and fierce. 

The room appeared to be an old utility room; rust on the floor marked the outlines of equipment that had once occupied it, but all that was left now were iron pipes bolted to the walls, presently being used for prisoner containment. Peter was standing, his arms spread out to the sides and handcuffed to a pipe running along the wall at chest level behind him. His shirt was open to the waist, torn and bloody. Diana could see by the stiff way that he was holding himself that he was probably hurt worse than he wanted to let on to her. His wrists were swollen and purple, the flesh lacerated around the cuffs holding them in place.

Neal was slumped against the wall and wrapped in a chain that had been wound securely around both arms, the nearest pipe, and his legs before being padlocked at his ankles. Obviously, Diana thought, his reputation for lock-picking and escape artistry preceded him; their captors were a lot more concerned about Neal being able to free himself than Peter. He was similarly roughed up, his once-fine suit a mess and his head down, hair hanging in his eyes.

She started towards Peter, but he gave his head a quick shake. "Check on Neal. He's not answering me." She could hear the controlled desperation in his voice, and could imagine what he'd gone through all too clearly -- trapped in the dark, unsure of Neal's condition and unable to reach out to him with anything other than his voice.

"Caffrey," she said, kneeling beside him and reaching out to tilt back his head.

"'m fine," Neal slurred, squinting against the light. "Worry too much." There was a long gash across his forehead, purpled around the edges; they'd hit him with something pretty solid. His skin was chalky and cold -- bordering on shock, if not actually there. 

"I wasn't worried," Peter said, his voice cracking with audible relief. "I was _annoyed._ An order to talk to me is still an order."

"Not good at doing orders," Neal mumbled.

"Yeah, I've noticed."

Diana tuned out their back-and-forth with the ease of practice, instead examining Neal's tightly-wound chains and the shiny, new-looking padlock at his ankles. She glanced around the room for something to pick it, then had an idea and unpinned the brooch on the shoulder of her dress. It had been Christie's mother's; she sent a silent apology to both of them, twisting the brooch's pin out to a 90-degree angle from the antique silver setting.

"They do anything to you?" Peter asked as she bent to the lock. She thought for a moment he was talking to Neal, then realized he meant her.

"Not at all," she said absently, jiggling the tumblers with her makeshift pick. "Just left me alone. I guess they thought I wasn't worth the hassle."

Peter gave a small, harsh laugh, then coughed again.

"Doin' it wrong," Neal informed her, raising his head to squint blearily at her progress. "Wrist needs to be up a little, that angle's not gonna --"

"You want to do this?" She was no Caffrey, but lock picking was one of the skills that Peter had insisted on for all of his agents. She was at least competent at it.

"Neal," Peter said, "stop complaining and let her rescue you. That's an order, by the way."

Neal pouted, which hopefully meant he didn't feel quite as bad as he looked. After a little more jiggling, the lock came free. Neal struggled clumsily with his loosening chains, more of a hindrance than a help as Diana tried to free him. 

"Just stay _still,_ " Diana snapped. "Hang on, boss, I'll be there in a minute."

"Neal can pick my locks," Peter said. "You need to get word to Jones."

She wanted to argue, but as much as she hated to leave them in this state, he was right. She pressed the brooch into Neal's ice-cold fingers, and fought back the temptation to say something stupidly sentimental to either of them. She was sure she'd regret it later, and it wouldn't help anyway. Instead she said, "Back in a minute," and went out the door with her shoe in hand. Tragically, it still seemed to be the best weapon they had, unless she wanted to try throwing the chains around like a ninja.

She realized halfway up the stairs that she might need to go back for their one and only lock pick, but to her surprise, the door at the top of the stairs yielded easily. _Confident,_ she thought. _And stupid._

She recalled that they'd been brought to the back of the mansion after their cover was blown, down a flight of stairs to the vestibule of some kind of service entrance, and then down to the basement. She cracked the door open, and saw no sign of anyone in the small entryway.

_Go._

Shoe in hand, silent in her stocking feet, she slipped into the vestibule. 

The sound of the outside door alerted her in time to spin around, but not to hide. Instead, she found herself face to face with one of the goons from earlier.

"Hey, aren't you the girl we locked in the basement?"

She hadn't realized henchmen actually came this stupid in real life. Apparently so. He reached for his gun, but she was in motion first. A hard blow to the stomach sent him to the floor, and then she had him on his face with a knee in his spine and the tip of her spike heel pressed against the back of his neck. Remembering Peter and Neal's bruised faces, she gripped his hair and whacked his head into the floor a couple of times. You couldn't be too careful, after all. Then she relieved him of first his gun and then, checking his pockets, his cell, and dialed a familiar number.

"Jones."

"It's Diana," she said, and he laughed in relief.

"Good to hear your voice."

"Yours too," she agreed. "We need backup, yesterday. And paramedics. Nobody's in dire straits --" she hoped "-- but sooner is better than later."

"We've got an assault team ready to go out here, just waiting for the word."

"Consider this the word," Diana said. "Our cover's blown sky-high and we're in trouble."

"On our way."

She laid down the phone and looked up to see Peter and Neal appear at the top of the basement stairs. Diana was fairly sure that if anyone had asked them, each of them would have said that he was only lending a hand to the other, but as far as she could tell it was more like mutual clinging to keep from falling over.

Peter grinned lopsidedly when he saw what she was doing ... and the weapon in her hand. "There's a gun right there," he pointed out, leaning against the wall and letting Neal down -- though it ended up being more of a controlled fall for both of them.

"You can have it, boss," Diana said, grinning back. "I like this shoe. It's served me well so far."

Neal rested his head in his hands, then looked up and squinted at her. "Weren't you complaining at the start of this whole thing about your heels, and how you hate walking in them?"

"I do." Diana wiggled her nylon-covered toes to demonstrate that she wasn't even trying at the moment. "But they're _great_ for stabbing people."

The distant sound of a door smashing in, and "Freeze! FBI!" was music to her ears.


End file.
